Notoriously militant

The story of a union branch at Ford Dagenham

Sheila Cohen, Merlin Press, 256 pages, paperback, £15.95

In 1946, after a series of stormy strikes and a mass occupation at Ford’s plant in Dagenham, Essex, thousands of workers came together in a new branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

Later, in the early 1980s, a band of workplace activists brought branch 1/1107 to explosive life with support for working-class causes from equal opportunities to the stunningly effective boycott of parts for South Africa.

Notoriously militant, which takes its title from a tabloid journalist’s verdict on the branch, covers the history of Ford’s Dagenham plant — and its roots in Henry Ford’s early US activities — from 20th-century shop floor struggles to the 21st-century fight against plant closure.

Based on original research and oral history, Notoriously militant offers a primer for activists and analysts on the confrontation between worker militancy and the rigours of “Fordism”.

In addition to being a lively popular history, the book considers a whole range of key arguments of interest to trade unionists such as direct democracy and member participation; links between workplace struggles and larger political questions in the wider world; the pressures on trade union leaders towards co-operation with management; and the interweaving of gender and ethnicity issues within a major industrial workplace.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk